


gut feelings

by neighborhoodscum



Category: South Park
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Eating Disorders, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Platonic Relationships, Platonic Soulmates, Recovery, Triggers, crying over coffee
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-18 16:41:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28746390
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neighborhoodscum/pseuds/neighborhoodscum
Summary: “Craig. Are you okay?” Tweek repeated, this time slower.His mouth seemed to answer before he could think about what he was about to say.“I think I need help.”///Craig follows his gut feeling and winds up at the coffee house.
Relationships: Craig Tucker & Tweek Tweak
Comments: 4
Kudos: 22





	gut feelings

**Author's Note:**

> fair warning: this story involves depictions of living in the midst of an eating disorder and having previously dealt with self-harm and having to fight urges not to. it is also referenced i believe twice that craig used to abuse alcohol in his freshman/sophomore year. please don't read this if you feel you are not in the position to do so!

Sometimes, even after months of keeping his food down, Craig still felt his gag reflex kick into gear after finishing a meal.

He was never sure why he’d ever thrown up in the first place, granted he never really cared for what others said of his appearance. He knew deep down in some dark, ugly corner of his heart, he wished just a little bit that he looked as ill as he felt. Nothing else, he just wanted the consistency; he didn’t care for being thin just for the sake of being thin.

He lay down on his bed for a moment, staring up at the glow in the dark stars on his ceiling wishing away his nausea as fast as he could. He wanted it to go away so, so badly. He wanted to stop doing things that hurt him. He’d stopped his other habits, such as digging ditches in his arms or drinking until he became a blubbering mess of a boy, yet this particular thing was wearing on him. Horribly. 

Once again, the thought of how nauseous he was creeped back in against his will, and he began to gag. He knew it was coming, he’d trained his body too well to fit his disgusting habits and he was paying the price for it. He felt as his mouth filled up with saliva, and he palmed around the edge of his bed in hopes he’d find his garbage can. When he finally did, he gripped it with white knuckles and pulled it to his chest as his stomach lurched and gurgled. Sitting up, he gave one final gag and the contents of his stomach emptied themselves into the garbage can. He felt the relief wash over him as his nausea disappeared with every wave of vomit.

He was miserable.

He spit after the vomit into the can, setting it back down on the floor until he could find the energy to stand back up. He looked to his left and out the window at the stars, watching them twinkle ever so slightly. I just want this to stop. I just want to be normal again.

After a few minutes of breathing, the smell of the vomit-filled can began to get to him, and he decided he should do something about the disgusting bag. With a deep inhale, he pushed himself off of the bed, clutching the garbage can with his right hand. The reek of stomach burnt his nose as he made his way to the back door to find the garbage can.

One could argue that throwing up after being nauseous would make you feel better, yet Craig was inclined to disagree. Realistically, he was relieved that he was no longer nauseous and could breathe without the contents of his stomach sloshing back and forth like moldy bong water; he was relieved he could lay down without worrying he’d choke on his own vomit. However, he only seemed to feel more and more like garbage with every movement of his tongue.

His mouth tasted disgusting. The bitter burning of stomach acid trailed back down into his throat and he felt worse now than before when he took a moment to think about it.

He slipped on a pair of shoes before sliding open the sliding glass door to the back porch and walking carefully down the steps to the bin, avoiding as many slippery boards as he could. When he finally flipped the lid open and tossed the bag inside, he dropped his arms to his sides and took a moment to smell the air.

It was nice to be outside.

He couldn’t remember the last time he was outside and stopped to think about how he was outside‒granted, he couldn’t quite remember the last time he went outside for anything other than to catch the bus to school.

It wasn’t a nice night out. It was cloudy and dry, and since spring was about to arrive, it had been snowing a bit more the past few days. The air, however, smelt nice; it smelt earthy, like mud, copper, and lawn clippings. Craig thought that was nice. The ground was cold beneath his slip-ons, and he shivered.

He closed his eyes and took another deep breath.

It was quiet out tonight. It was a Monday evening and everyone in the town was either sitting down for dinner or watching the evening news around this time, except for the Tuckers who, instead, opted to square off into their own spaces after they were done eating, which in Craig’s case seemed to be the root of his issues.

Tonight however, as Craig stood out in his backyard, he decided he would be going out‒though he was not sure where he planned on going.

The short journey through the house to grab his sneakers and headphones was enough time for him to start second-guessing whether or not he truly needed to go on a walk. He hadn’t fed Stripe yet (but there was still food in his bowl, so why should that matter?) and he hadn’t showered that day (but he was going out into the cold and would want to afterwards anyways). Yet, despite these thoughts, he still found himself continuing to get ready to leave.

He slipped on his converse and kneeled beside the front door, tying and untying them over and over until they finally felt as if they were evenly as tight in both shoes.

“Are you going somewhere?”

Craig turned to face his mother, who was standing in the doorway to the kitchen with a look on her face that told him that seemed to be a mix of concern and suspicion. The last time he’d suddenly decided to leave the house, he’d not told anybody and gone without his phone or making any contact with his family for several days, only to show back up on the couch one morning just past 6am, reeking of booze and cigarettes.

He was about 15 when his brain had become too loud for him to handle and felt the need to silence it. He’d simply walked out one night after being awake for too long and made his way to Kenny McCormick’s house, where he proceeded to spend the following nights getting too drunk to think or feel anything, wandering the streets for hours with Kenny and planning out a future for the both of them that would realistically never come true. They were both just impulsive people who had a similar desire to get out of the shithole town they were living in and the people they were surrounded by. There was no future for them together that they truly wanted; they just wanted to escape their own minds.

After Thomas had found him on the couch looking a sickly shade of gray and damp clothes, the Tuckers both realized that there was more to their son than they’d noticed. The both of them were heartbroken looking at the state he was in, and seeing him look so hollowed out and destructive only made the pain hurt worse.

“I’m just going for a walk,” Craig reassured her. “I’ll be back in a few hours at most.”

Laura, not fully convinced, closed her eyes and gave a small sigh. “All right, but don’t be late. It’s a school night.”

Craig gave her a faint smile before opening the door and heading out.

The temperature seemed to have dropped drastically in the few minutes he’d spent inside, as well as the sky which had seemed to have turned orange in such a short matter of time. Regardless, it didn’t feel as harsh out as it had that morning catching the bus; he still felt as though he was supposed to be outside. It was a feeling he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt in such an important way before.

The journey felt odd at first. He felt an unnerving sense of familiarity as he made his way in the direction of Kenny’s house despite the fact he knew this time he had no intentions of winding up there again‒and once the house was in sight, he turned down the first street he could which ended up leading him into town.

South Park was quite a pretty place at night. Most stores had closed earlier in the afternoon since just about every one of them was a family-owned business, however others such as Skeeter’s and Tweek Bros stayed open late into the night. He figured since he had a few dollars in his pocket from lunch that day (which he had inevitably skipped in fear of his stomach shifting the way it had after dinner that night), he might as well stop by and get something to drink. Something warm.

He found himself going in the direction of the coffee house without even taking the time to think about it. He was getting colder by the minute and the sky was getting darker with every step he took, and the Tweeks always made sure their place was warm and cozy for the customers who were shivering as they stepped inside.

The building was nice to look at, really. It was painted a soothing shade of brown, and the red sign displaying the business name was lit up in a way that seemed to be telling him to come in. He wasn’t quite sure why, but he felt like he simply was supposed to be there. He wondered if it really had any significance, or his body was just telling him to find warmth before his body temperature dropped with the air’s.

His fingers felt numb against the glass door, any feeling left in them seemed to simply fail to detect that he was touching anything. He pulled down the hood of his jacket before making his way inside.

The inside was lit with warm lantern-like lights, and the chairs at the tables had never seemed to look quite as comfortable as they did when Craig saw them just then. He was suddenly aware of how his legs ached from walking the few miles to get there, and he couldn’t seem to find the will to stand much longer. Regardless of the aching, once he reached the chair at a table off to the right of the building, he took his time brushing muffin crumbs off of the seat before sitting down.

“What are you doing here?”

Craig’s entire body jerked for a moment. He wasn’t really expecting anyone to be anywhere but in the back; he hadn’t rung the bell on the counter, nor was there one above the door to let Richard or Linda know he’d come inside. When he finally processed who was standing beside the table, he realized it was Tweek.

“Oh,” he answered flatly, not quite sure of what to respond with. Before he could finish searching the depths of his mind for a rational answer, he found himself stammering out a short “I don’t know”.

Tweek blinked, not quite sure how to respond. He wasn’t sure it was worth asking anything else before asking the obvious; “Do you want something to drink?”

After a beat, Craig nodded slowly. “Yeah, yeah. That’d be nice.”

The look in Tweek’s eyes was more than just curiosity, it seemed like he was worried about the state that Craig was in. He had snow on his shoulders and his nose was turned red from the cold. He couldn’t seem to make any sense of how or why he’d wound up in the coffee house at 7:45 on a Monday evening, just fifteen minutes before closing. After his initial question, however, he decided not to press too hard for an answer. He supposed he’d find out eventually. With a nod, he made his way to the back to fix them both some coffee and hoped he remembered correctly how Craig liked his made.

Craig sat there in silence for a while. He didn’t check his phone for the time or a text from his parents (even though he figured he probably should do so), he simply sat there with his hands out on the table in front of them and focused on the conflicting feeling he had in his chest. He’d never really paid attention to any of the sensations of his body outside of when he was depressed or was entering another episode‒so when he took the time to think about it, he couldn’t seem to trust that in that moment he felt like he was almost okay.

Tweek returned with the coffees sooner than he’d anticipated. The paper cups were placed on opposite sides of the table, and Craig waited for him to sit down and take a hold of his before reaching for his own that sat in front of him.

For a while, a comfortable silence hung in the air as they sipped on their drinks. Craig could feel the inside of his body begin to warm up with every gulp he took, and despite the fact his body felt better physically, he began to grow anxious.

Tweek eventually decided to break the silence. “So, what’s on your mind?”

Craig wasn’t sure that he had an answer to that question.

There were several things running through his mind at all times, and yet it felt as though his brain had gone completely silent. “Nothing all too interesting.”

Tweek hummed lightly and took another sip of his coffee. “Business has been slow tonight. I’ve just been sitting in the back without much to do since, like, three.”

“Sounds boring.”

“It is.” Tweek took a moment to carefully plan out how he was going to go about his questions from here on out. “So what were you doing? Before you got here, I mean. You don’t usually come alone.”

A beat. “I was on a walk.”

Tweek’s eyebrows furrowed. He felt even more confused now than before. “Where were you going?”

Craig broke eye contact and looked at the table and shrugged. “I don’t know. I was just walking.”

“And you ended up all the way up here?” Tweek felt the worry start to bubble back up in his stomach. “Why?”

How was Craig supposed to explain this? ‘Oh, I don’t know, the spirits guided me’. “I just felt like I was supposed to come here.”

Tweek took a breath as though he was going to say something before taking a moment to think about what he should respond with. “Do you know why?”

Craig shook his head. “Not really,” he answered honestly. “I just had a gut feeling, I guess? I don’t know, it just‒it felt important. It felt like me coming here was important.”

Tweek studied Craig’s face carefully. He had this weird atmosphere to him right then, as though there was something that he needed to know. This was strange; Craig had always been the type to be closed off and not show that there was something going on behind his eyes until he did something drastic out of pure thirst for what others could only assume was emotion, such as sit on the edge of highway 285 in the middle of the night or press the gas pedal of his car as far down as he could until his car began to protest. Tweek, however, knew this wasn’t a thirst for emotion‒it was something darker.

“Are you okay?”

Craig hadn’t quite anticipated that. He was okay, sure, but only in that moment. If he said yes, he’d feel like a liar. Overall, he still felt as though something was eating away at him. His physical health was suffering. He kept avoiding food, and when he wasn’t trying to force it back out of him it was coming back up on its own. He’d found himself lately craving things he didn’t want to crave anymore and every time he felt distressed he felt the need to punish his body for it. But in that moment, he was okay, so would it be a lie to say he wasn’t as well?

“Craig. Are you okay?” Tweek repeated, this time slower.

His mouth seemed to answer before he could think about what he was about to say.

“I think I need help.”

Craig closed his eyes the moment he realized what he’d just admitted to Tweek. He didn’t want to see the look on his face. He didn’t want to see what he looked like when he watched Craig admit defeat.

Tweek wasn’t sure what to do. It was a really strange sight that lay before him; Craig Tucker was being open and vulnerable in what could only be a moment of raw mental exhaustion. Craig admitting something so personal to him wasn’t something that Tweek had expected to hear that night, and now that he was sitting across the table from him in such a state, he had to go about his next few sentences with more caution than the rest.

“Is there anything specific that you need help with?”

Craig swallowed. “I can’t stop doing… bad things. Like, things I thought I could control.”

“Like what?”

Oh no. This was going to be uncomfortable.

Craig hated this kind of shit. He hated being confronted, even if he knew he’d put himself in this situation. He hated having people know just how fucked up he was, but this time, it felt necessary. “I, uh,” he started off nervously, reaching a hand up to his nose to scratch an itch that wasn’t really there. “I guess I… throw up sometimes. Not on purpose, I mean‒sometimes on purpose, but other times it just happens, like my body knows what’s supposed to happen next, and I can’t seem to go a day anymore without just feeling sick all the time. So in turn, I stopped, like, eating shit that would make me feel sick, so I just… stopped eating almost anything.”

It felt as though words were spilling out of him like brain vomit, and something in his brain wasn’t telling him to stop.

Tweek didn’t reply, and the words fell out faster.

“I used to dig into my skin with shit, I guess? Anything sharp I could get my hands on, anything around me, I guess? One time when I was, uh, fixing stripes cage out back, I couldn’t get the wheel on just one time too many and when I got too frustrated with myself for not being able to do it, I just started looking around, like ‘I need to do something about this, I need to punish myself for this’ or something, and the only thing I had was a screwdriver, but that wasn’t really that sharp, right? I just felt angry, and all I could think to do was grab it by the opposite end and just start bashing the handle into any part of my body it could reach, like I just wanted to completely destroy myself before I could watch myself fail again. I can’t stop doing shit like that.”

Craig looked up and finally met eyes. “I just feel like I’m spending everyday waiting for the next thing to set me off.”

Tweek didn’t look as phased as he felt, and while it made Craig anxious, he was relieved he wasn’t getting the dramatic, pitiful response he expected.

A silence fell over them for a few moments.

“We’ll get you help,” Tweek finally answered in a soft tone of voice. “It sounds terrible, and I can’t quite tell you I know how you feel, but… I know you can get help, Craig.”

Craig swallowed once more. There was a lump in his throat he hadn’t anticipated being there, and it felt like it was trying to choke him. He tried to take a deep enough breath to force it back down. “But how?”

“I’m sure we can figure something out,” Tweek assured him with a comforting smile. “You’ve got all of us here for you, and we’ll still be with you every time you need us to be.”

Something in that sentence sent what felt like a gust of wind through Craig’s chest, and he felt the tears start to brim in his eyes. He did not want to cry, but at the same time he felt as though in that moment he didn’t need to hold back.

So, he let a tear or two slip while he smiled back at Tweek. His breathing was shaking enough to make his body tremble. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on steadying it enough to stop crying. As it evened out, he felt a pair of arms slip around his shoulders from beside him. Tweek was no longer seated at the table, but instead leaning down beside Craig’s chair to offer him a last bit of support before he knew he’d have to go home.

“We love you, man,” Tweek whispered in reminder as he rubbed his back. “You’ve got me, Clyde, Token, Jimmy, and so many others who want you to be the best you can be.”

Craig gave a sniffle as he reached his hands back up to grab the arm around his chest, to which he held close and tight. “Thank you.”

Tweek pulled back slowly and gave a small cough. “Are you done with your coffee?”

“Hm?” Craig hummed back, before snapping back to his surroundings. “Oh, yeah, yeah. I have money for it, by the way.”

Tweek waved him off as he reached over and picked up the cups from the table. “Don’t worry about it, it’s not like we’re gonna lose profit over just one latte.”

Craig chuckled lightly and stood up to stretch his legs. His body felt so tired, yet he felt as if he had more energy now than before he came. He stood there for a minute, rolling his joints and stretching out before setting up Spotify back on his phone.

“I have to close the store now,” Tweek yawned, making his way back over to the door where Craig was standing, “but I assume you have to leave anyways so I won’t beat myself up over kicking you out.”

Craig smiled a bit before nodding and seeing a text from his mom saying to come home from a few minutes ago. “Yeah, I should get going.”

Tweek paused and looked around at what he’d need to clean or do before he left himself.

“Hey, uh,” Tweek started awkwardly, “if you ever need to talk to me, you can, you know?”

Craig nodded, feeling slightly embarrassed that he had to have somebody tell him that. “Yeah, I know. Thanks, man.”

Tweek smiled again. “Alright, well, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Craig flipped his hood back up and walked back out into the cold. It was darker outside now than it was when he got here (if that was even possible), but he didn’t mind. He gave a sigh as he began walking in the direction he came from, back towards his house across town.

On the walk home, he felt a sense of pride begin to resonate within his chest that he’d never felt before, and he would be lying if he didn’t say he couldn’t remember the last time he felt this okay.

This time around, he could finally say in full honestly that he felt okay.

**Author's Note:**

> i had a few paragraphs of this written in my docs from when i was having a particularly bad day and just started writing about how i was feeling in the moment and then today i suddenly had this burst of motivation to keep writing. except when i found this i had started writing this from the perspective of yoosung from mystic messenger which is a little embarrassing but i thought it was funny so i figured i'd share with you lol


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